HWBOT Articles

We have been working hard the past few months on the 8th HWBOT revision, dubbed 'classic', in order to launch it early 2019. It is a mix between nostalgia for the early HWBOT revisions, having a seasonal ranking next to the existing career ranking and enabling/disabling points for a lot of benchmarks voted on by the community.

As 2019 is coming near, we are currently holding a poll over at the forums to see which benchmarks should still be applicable for points in 2019 and which not. The consensus is less benchmarks should have global points, but which exactly do you want to see removed or added? Cast your vote in the forums!

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Head over to overclock.net if you want to participate in the annual Freezer’ Burn overclocking competition. 2400$ in prizes, very active community, split ambient and extreme cooling stages, they've got it all!

This competition was designed with the goal that everyone can participate and be competitive. Whether you are an experienced subzero overclocker or just starting and this is all new, you can learn and participate in a fair and even environment. There are separate categories for ambient cooled and extreme cooled computers. You will only be allowed to participate in one category, but you an change categories at any time.
We learned alot from the last Freezer’ Burn competition and we decided to make one very fundamental change for this competition. The biggest and most important change is that we will not limit the CPU or core count in this competition. Simply put, we will allow every CPU ever made in this competition. You might be saying to yourself, hey that's not fair since I only have a 4 core CPU and others might have 32 core CPU’s. Well, we have an interesting solution to this problem, which will be described below in the 2D section. To take things a step further, we are only choosing 3D benchmark programs were the CPU does not influence the score. No matter what CPU you have, you can compete in a fair environment!

The GALAX GOC 2018 Qualification ended today, and the submissions made are being scrutinized the next 24 hours. Some submissions where rejected incorrectly due to a mixup the the GPUPI version restrictions, and might be allowed to enter the competition if they were initially submitted - but rejected by the engine - before the competition deadline.

Hold on tight, we will have the final ranking validated tomorrow at 19h CEST.

Intel just took the veil off the performance figures for its latest Z390 platform and the forthcoming Intel Core i9 9900K processor, an 8-core/16-thread Coffee Lake architecture chip that so far has broken 10 World Records and 11 Global First Places in the 8 cores CPU category. The new Intel Z390 chipset has also broken the DDR4 memory frequency record, pushing it to 5566MHz.

As the GOC 2018 Online Qualification Contest just started this week, GALAX has provided some tools to get the most out of your 2080ti. It might get you the edge to get the ticket to the finals, but use at own risk!

Let us know in the comments if you would like to receive the mod tools and tweaking tips.

HWBOT news

The HWBOT World Tour 2017 landed in Poitiers, France for Gamers Assembly this weekend, hosting overclocking workshops and contests to generally spread the word of overclocking. From a competitive overclocking perspective, the highlight of the event is the Overclocking World Championship, a series of extreme overclocking contests that are held at each World Tour location where winners get a seat at a Grand Final at the end of the year. Yesterday we saw the Qualifier Segment of the contest with twenty overclockers pushing their hardware to the limit to score as highly as possible across three benchmarks. Let’s take a peek at yesterday’s action.

Stage 1: Super PI 32M - In Stage 1 we find current HWBOT league No.1 Dancop of Germany taking top spot. Dancop managed to complete a Super Pi 32M run in just 4min 38sec 922ms, a score made by pushing his Core i7 7700K to 6,798MHz (+61.87%) with system memory configured to 1,800.5MHz (12-17-17-28)(note: all overclockers were given two CPUs which were drawn at random). In second place we have French No.1 Wizerty with a score of 4min 49sec 218ms while orion24 arrived in third place with 4min 54sec 195ms. All the scores from Stage 1 can be found here.

Stage 2: Cinebench R15 - Stage 2 is all about benching Cinebench R15, an area where Niuulh certainly shines, taking the win with a score of 1,461 cb points. This was done with a Core i7 7700K clocked to 6,595.18MHz (+57%) with DDR4 configured at 1,800.1MHz (13-18-18-28). Second place goes to Wizerty with a score of 1,458 cb points while another French Extreme overclocker Mylth arrives in third place with 1,445 cb points. You can find all the Stage 2 scores here.

Stage 3: 3DMark11 Physics - Finally in Stage 3 we face a test using the classic 3DMark11 Physics benchmark. Wizerty tops the table with a score of 18,430 points, pushing his Core i7 7700K to a very healthy 6,654.78MHz with memory pushed to 1,747.4MHz (13-18-18-28). His closest rival is orion24 with 18,076 points while Dancop takes third place with 17,730 points. Check out the scoring for Stage 3 here.

After three hours of furious benching Wizerty, Dancop, orion24 and Niuulh will now contest the Final segment later today. The contest will feature Semi-Finals plus a Bronze Final and a Final, all of which will use a 1v1 format where overclockers compete side by side on the main stage. It should be pretty exciting.

Just in case you missed it, the latest episode of the OC Show from OverClocking-TV has been available for a few days now. Edition S03E12 as usual covers a great deal of ground with Xyala and Trouffman this time around joined by tech reviewer MrTechQC. Among the broad variety of topics being discussed on the show is the arrival of a new 5G modem from Qualcomm, the launch of the Google Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones (and all the high-end components inside including the latest Android 7 OS). Other gadget related discussion includes a look at the latest 960 Pro 2TB M.2 drives from Samsung.

As usual Xyala gives us a great overview of all the happenings over on OC-ESPORTS where Indonesia’s Lucky_n00b won the HWBOT World Championship Wild Card contest. Lucky_n00b joins the six winners from the HWBOT World Series contests which were held during the World Tour 2016. Interestingly, it was actually the first OC contest on OC-ESPORTS with paid entry. The contest proved to be a tense affair at its climax with Dancop and Lucky_n00b literally tied at the end of it.

Towards the back end of the show the guys get down to discussing the relative merits of the new GTX 1050 and 1050Ti cards from Nvidia. MrTexhQC gives a great break down of the huge potential value of these cards from an enthusiast and overclocking perspective.

Did I mention that they also discuss the possibility of flying hundreds of people to Mars? Plus Trouffman's recent exploits at TwitchCon? Trust me, this show has something for everyone. You can find it here on the Overclocking-TV YouTube Channel.

On October 25 FinalWire released a new stable update to the desktop editions of its popular system information software. AIDA64 v5.80 supports the latest Windows 10 builds and the most recent hardware components, including the AMD RX 400 series and NVIDIA’s GTX 1050 GPUs.

As a new feature, it now allows users to define global hotkeys with which they can enable or disable the AIDA64 hardware monitoring panels or switch between multiple hardware information pages on external displays, even when AIDA64 is running in the background. Using these customized key combinations, PC enthusiasts can also start and stop saving temperature, voltage and power measurements as well as fan RPM readouts to a CSV or HTML log file. The developers have made AIDA64 v5.80 DPI aware so that all elements of its graphical user interface scale properly when the DPI zoom is active in Windows. In practice, this means that users will see no more blurry or incorrectly sized graphics or text on high-resolution screens as AIDA64 now looks crisp even on 4K and 8K LCD and OLED displays.

It’s the time of the week when get all nostalgic and look back at point in time when something truly astounding happened in the world of Overclocking. This week we take you back just a few years to August 2014 when a well respected Finnish overclocker by the name of The Stilt managed to break the World Record for the highest ever CPU frequency.

To the uneducated, Overclocking sounds like it’s simply a matter of raising the clock speed of your computer to make it go faster. In some respects that is mostly true, but an even truer fact is the reality that CPU clock speeds have strict limitations. AMD’s Piledriver architecture CPUs however are designed in such a way that the clock speeds can indeed to pushed to pretty amazing heights, a fact proved so emphatically by The Stilt back in 2014. The talented Finn took an AMD FX-8370, an Octa-core 4.0GHz processor, and pushed it to a massive 8.72GHz, a percentage increase of +118%. The record was made with the Vcore voltage set to a huge 2.064v using an ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z motherboard and AMD Radeon Performance DDR3 memory clocked at 2,218MHz.

The Stilt's World Record still stands today, but perhaps the fact what makes it all the more impressive is that the FX-8370 was using all 8 cores at the time. Most competing CPU frequency submissions actually only use one or two active cores.

Let’s not forget also that with a run of just 4min 25sec and 578ms Sofos1990 is currently the holder of the SuperPi 32M World Record, ousting previous record holder, who is non-other than Dancop, by a margin of 156ms. The score was made using the same i7 6700K pushed to 6,834MHz, a solid +70.85% beyond stock settings. Other notable hardware includes a GIGABYTE Z170X-OC Force LN2 motherboard and a G.SKILL Trident Z DD4 memory kit (3600 C17).

Every month or so we have a look at how well the overclocking teams adopt Rookie and Novice overclockers at HWBOT. The most friendly Rookie teams are based in North America mostly. Just like last month the most Rookie friendly team is the Overclocking Subreddit /r/overclocking which enrolled 30 (+1) Rookies and 67 (+3) Novices. In second place we find ASUS Republic of Gamers from the United States with 26 (+1) Rookies and 25 (+2) Novices. In third place we find the Overclock.net with 17 (-2) Rookies and 50 (-1) Novices. New in the table is the French team from Hardware.fr [HFR] and the US-based team from Tech|inferno.

In the Rookie League, UFDisciple from South Africa and winner of the World Series for Amateurs in Africa is leading with 453.70 points which is 188.9 points more than I_AssassinArka_I from India and 243.7 points more than NFree from Hungary.

Congratulations to all the overclocking teams adopting the new overclockers and of course the Rookies for their dedication to overclocking!

The final qualification round of the World Series Asia contest got underway earlier today with the highest turn out seen on any day of the week. 26 overclockers again went head to head benching on Intel’s latest and greatest Extreme Edition processors in an effort to clinch the final seat in the Semi-Finals on Saturday. The three benchmarks used in today’s three hour qualification round were XTU4GHz (i.e. CPU clocks restricted to 4GHZ frequency or below), 3DMark Fire Strike Physics and Memory Clock Single Channel.

The eventual winner with a pair of outright wins in stages 1 and 2 was in fact yesterday’s 1v1 runner up, the passionate Pole that is known in OC circles simply as Xtreme Addict. In second place we have Swiss No.1 racoon who proved his worth pushing DDR4 memory clocks with a win stage 3. Third place on the podium went to India’s foremost overclocker, Toolius. Here are the prizes and standings for the qualification round:

1st Place: $500 USD: Xtreme Addict (Poland)

2nd Place: $250 USD: Racoon (Switzerland)

3rd Place: $125 USD: Toolius (India)

Note: For several reasons that we will outline here in some detail, the actual 1v1 contestants for day 4 did not end up being the top two on the leaderboard. Xtreme Addict takes his place in the 1v1 as qualification round leader, simple enough. This is where it gets a little more complicated.

Day 1 winner Rauf will not be in Taiwan for the Finals on Saturday and thusly had to concede his place. His place would ordinarily go to Day 1 runner up Hazzan, except that Hazzan already has a place in the finals as 1v1 winner of Day 2. The Finals ticket was then handed to third place finisher Bullshooter who in fact declined due to the fact that he would rather arrive at the final using a GIGABYTE board as opposed to the ASRock boards usedon Day 2 (Note contest rules dictate that overclockers must use the same board in the finals that used in qualification).

This means that his place now goes to Racoon who now claims the Day 1 final berth in the finals with Bullshooter facing Xtreme Addict in the Day 4 1v1 contest. The upshot of this complicated state of affairs means that in Day 4, Bullshooter actually managed to position himself in line for a Semi-Final ticket benching on GIGABYTE.

Bullshooter and Xtreme Addict arrived on the HWBOT mains stage benching on randomly drawn i7 6950X chips and GIGABYTE X99 SOC Champion motherboards. The two contenders saw the random benchmark draw throw out 3DMark Fire Strike Physics, a benchmark that once again was accepted by both overclockers without veto.

With just over ten minutes of bench time remaining, Xtreme Addict was flying high with a score of 33,239, while Bullshooter had not yet actually made a successful run – signs that something was wrong with his system. Possible condensation issues due the humid Taiwan climate, a very real issue in live benching, or possibly just the Gods of irony, with the GIGABYTE board not giving the German the competitive edge he was looking for.

With just seconds to go Bullshooter finally posted a 3DMark Firestrike Physics score of 32,009 points. By the close of the contest however Xtreme Addict had managed to win the 1v1 contest with his score of 33,239.

Congrats to Xreme Addict! The Semi-Final line up for tomorrow will involve Dancop vs Xtreme Addict and Racoon vs Hazzan.

G.SKILL have just announced their plans for Computex 2016 where once again we will be treated to a World Record Stage where five local motherboard vendors go head to head live on the show floor to see who can whip out the best scores and records. Then of course there is the third edition of the OC World Cup which pits some of the best overclockers in the world against each other for some seriously tasty looking wads of cash of up to $10,000. This year will see Dancop, Alex@ro, Hazzan, Splave, Wizerty, and Lucky_n00b compete.

[Press Release] G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world’s leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is extremely excited to announce and host the two largest annual extreme overclocking events at Computex this year – the 5th Annual OC World Record Stage 2016 and 3rd Annual OC World Cup 2016.

Gathering an all-star lineup of professional overclockers from around the world, G.SKILL is ready to rewrite overclocking benchmark world records with the newest hardware from the leaders of each field, including the top 5 manufacturers of performance motherboards, Intel, Samsung, and NVIDIA.

Both events will be held at G.SKILL Computex Booth I0608, located at Taipei City’s Nangang Exhibition Hall, 1F.

So what have we learned about the i7 6950X? We know it will be clocked at 3.5GHz and have a nice substantial 25MB of cache (25% more than the current top dog the i7-5960X). While it has yet to be confirmed by Intel, there are substantial rumors that are gaining momentum regarding core count.

According to wccttech.com the i7 6950X will have a total of 10 cores. With hyperthreading enabled that results in a total of twenty threads. The retail price for the first HEDT platform in almost two years is also rumored to be pushed a little higher with the i7 6950X costing in the region of $1,500 USD. Other details out there include a TDP similar to Haswell-E of 140 watts, out of the box memory support for DDR4 at 2400MHz and of course compatibility for current X99 chipset boards.

Taipei, Taiwan (1 Apr 2016) – G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world’s leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, announces new high-frequency, high-capacity additions to the Ripjaws SO-DIMM family with DDR4-3000MHz CL16 kits at 1.2V, available in 8GB to 32GB (16GBx2) configurations.

Foreseeing the growing demand of high-end gaming laptops and small form-factor PCs, G.SKILL continues the development of higher speed DDR4 SO-DIMM memory. Today, G.SKILL is excited to raise the maximum support of DDR4 SO-DIMM frequency to 3000MHz CL16. Most importantly, this frequency speed is achieved at a low voltage of 1.2V, while DDR4-3000MHz kits typically require a higher 1.35V. A lower operating voltage is the ideal power-efficient solution for laptops and small form-factor PCs with a smaller thermal footprint.